Developing Digital Skills in my Classroom : Coding

Ollie presents at the beginning a video to illustrate the importance of coding. It is a very inspiring video from the website m ade w/ code, a website where you can find numerous resources and projects. Further more you can participate in a community, where ideas can be exchanged and codes can be shared.

Ollie introduces after the video the tools that are needed for coding. He reffers to a wide-ranging set of tools, from tools that are specifically designed to help teachers and young people understand programming languages, such as HTML and CSS, JavaScript, IQuiery, PHP, Python and Ruby on the one hand. But on the other hand, also, more simple programming languages, such as those based on the Blockly programme language or programming languages that have been developed to support certain applications such as Scratch and Kodu.

Ollie starts with the Barclays Code Playground, ,which is aimed at younger children and works well on tablet computer. It helps understand a little bit more about HTML and how it works.

The next website he presents is a website already mentioned above, made w/ code by Google. It specifically aimed at getting girls into computing a little bit more. It͛s got some tutorials and helps understanding the HTLM. It also contains an introduction to a similar code language to Blockly.

The next website to present is scratch, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a programming language which has been mentioned many times. It uses a Blockly type code language, like LEGO blocks. It͛ is also great for games development as well as animation. There are lots of tutorials available for Scratch. Also there is a Scratch junior version available as well exclusively for the Android platform and for the iPad.

The next programming language is kodu by Microsoft. Kodu helps young people to understand the processes of programming. Kodu is only available for the PC but it is a rich programming language which gives young people instant feedback

Microsoft also developed touch develop. In touch develop you develop on the Microsoft Windows platform. Once you have actually developed your apps or websites, they work well on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux etc. etc.

Code.org originates from the U.S.A. There are a lot of resources to try and get young people motivated about coding. Also you can find links to a number of other tutorials where you can learn languages such as HTML, HTML5 or JavaScript. Further more there are a lot of interesting exercises.

The next webside is Code Academy. It is a great website for students that want to use and want to learn about programming and coding. They can pick a language, work their way through it in simple, easy to understand exercises. They can earn digital badges along the way and at the end of it. They can showcase their work. They can participate in communities to exchange ideas and get support.

Khan Academy is mentioned here, because one can learn a lot of things from there. Also there are many tutorials that young people can work through to learn about computer coding.

html5rocks.com is a Google project about HTML5. HTML5 is what the modern Web is built on. Many Internet-enabled and mobile phone applications are built on HTML5.

The Codeplayer.com is a little bit different. Instead of giving you step-by-step tutorials, you can watch a video of somebody developing an app or developing a website, or developing a part of a website. It is very appealing to visual learners.

MIT open courseware are a number of courses from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which are available online. You can learn about computer science and you could learn about programming at a level which is equivalent to higher education.

W3schools.com 's target group are not students. Their target group of this site are web developers. The tutorials are offered for free, but an assessment is not cost free.